"Protesters who wear masks could face arrest, up to a month in jail and a £1,000 fine under proposed measures that human rights campaigners claim are pandering to “culture war nonsense”.
Police in England and Wales will be given the power to arrest people if they are wearing face coverings at specific demonstrations, the Home Office has said."
Been a bad 18 months or so for privacy in the UK. Online Safety Bill passed, the right to take strike action curtailed, people in receipt of benefits (including disabled people) will soon (as from 2025) have their bank accounts open to the government, the right to protest curtailed and now this.
Remember remember the fifth of November,
When Guy Fawks took the fall.
Be sure to wear your mask from now on,
They can’t arrest us all
Was just setting up my viewing for the rest of the evening, and ironically enough, it’s on tonight! 9pm on Quest (and again on Quest +1)
damn, gpt is terrible at poetry
I think it’s important to relate the latter part to the former - beyond the privacy issues with not being allowed to wear masks (and having our bank accounts invaded), there is also the health aspect, and disallowing masks is one sure fire way to keep disabled people from assembling, since, you know, we don’t want to get covid, being significantly more likely to die from it (not necessarily because of the illness, but because our lives are deemed less worth saving).
The lack of any mask mandates already excludes disabled people from so many public spaces, this is just another way to keep us (as well as others, you know, first they came for…) from fighting back. as they strip us of every last human right.
Not comparing, we have our own issues, but the US just said not wearing a mask in public is akin to not paying taxes or speeding - it’s still illegal and not free speech because it affects others.
Good luck enforcing this. I have a right to protest, and I also have an autoimmune disease that means I will wear a mask in public spaces on the advice of my doctor, especially when there’s a new strain of covid.
Look forward to many, many federal cases under the Americans with Disabilities Act, dipshits.
Americans with disabilities act in England? How does that work?
Yeah, I skimmed it, and read UK as US.
Sorry, I have dual citizenship and sometimes conflate the two. Deleted my comment as erroneous.
Antifa ain’t happy about that.
First they force you to wear masks in public, then they ban it. Fucking clowns.
Nah, not this rhetoric. Masks were mandatory because of COVID, and that was the right move. Get out of here with your bad-by-association argument. Making masks mandatory then was the right move. Banning masks during protests is not the right move. Both these facts are not mutually exclusive.
When you make such weak, bad faith arguments, you only give fuel for the other side to break down even your valid arguments.
There are plenty of reasons to call UK clowns, but masks during this centuries worst version of the black death (so far) isn’t one of them.
I think I need to clarify.
I support mask wearing, I wore one despite being legally exempt on health grounds (autism).
The fact is covid is still here, if anything wearing masks at a large scale gathering like a protest is still a very good idea on health grounds, especially for those with weakened immune systems, the unvaccinated, etc. It’s utterly mad to ban a protection device you once mandated when the problem it protects from never went away.
Fake beards, wigs , sunglasses and presumably face paint should be ok
Stay safe protestors. Leave id and phone at home, don’t hold anything that could be interpreted as a weapon, and carry a “your rights” card to help you remember what to do if the police try to take away your freedom.
It looks like this would apply to any item used to conceal one’s identity. So, it’s possible that all of those things could be included.
Face paint would be mind blowing, what will all the football fans do?
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Don’t talk to Police
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Don’t talk to police
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Does it apply to FFP2 respirators?
Hmm… I may be mistaken but can they not already arrest troublemakers, arsonists, violent/aggressive individuals and other sort of rioters/agitators with preexisting laws/bylaws/regulations ?
On the other hand, I’m trying to see the silver lining here… perhaps this new law will make it difficult for agent provocateur¹ from operating without repercussions and anonymity unless the law specifically has a carve out for them (I wouldn’t be too surprised, but it would be another major blow to the resiliency of democracy in the United Kingdom).
Police discretion will already make an exception for them even it’s not explicitly carved out, there is no silver lining, it’s just more police state shit
I’m sure there’ll be a carve-out to the mask prohibition. I mean, what if there’s protest action a minister/police department dislikes? They need a way for their agents to don confiscated Nazi paraphernalia before joining the event and poisoning it, while remaining unidentifiable as state actors.
They don’t need a carve out for that, police discretion will do
it will be interesting to see if we ever get to a point during the next inevitable global pandemic where masks are compulsory in some places and illegal in others
They want it to be illegal to both wear and not to wear a mask so that they can selectivity enforce arbitrary laws against whomever they wish.
Like that traffic light on a rural Russian intersection that is always red
or like in America, where if the cops want to kick your door in all they have to do is say they smelled something and then it’s on you to prove they didn’t
The last one hasn’t ended yet
Genocide Island going back to its roots.
So if someone doesn’t want to get sick for being in a huge crowd, they get arrested? Truly genius.
Yes that’s why we wear masks yeah
I mean I do realize there is usually another reason for mask on protests - but there is this one too!
It wasn’t before Covid, but it is now, and it should have been then.
On the privacy sub yep. For sure
This is just the first step at making protests illegal.
The first step? They’ve been on this path for years
Yeah, no, we’re long past that point
https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/advice_information/pcsc-policing-act-protest-rights/
by decades
https://socialistworker.co.uk/reviews-and-culture/police-brutality-against-striking-miners-and-cover-ups-laid-bare
and centuries
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_MassacreI think you mean the ninety first step.
Face paint.
Doesn’t affect facial recognition tech, which I think is why this passed
There are designs for face paint specifically to defeat facial recognition.
You bring up a good point. What qualifies as a mask? Do fake beards and mustaches count? What about religious face coverings? What about people who have prosthetic noses? I have a feeling this is going to be a tricky one for them to enforce in any sort of reasonable way.
A big thing you can hide is the distance between your eyes. Cover one of them with hair or something and any FR tech won’t work as well. You could also have a bunch of infrared led’s on your hat or something then the camera wouldn’t see shit. There’s a video out there that’s an interview with an ex-CIA agent or something that talks about disguises and whatnot.
large image
Face paint it is.
Don’t forget to import you some Faygo.
As someone who used to run in the juggalo crowd, idk man Faygo is perfect for some bigger scale resistence bullshit haha
I would do it anyway in mass. I want 100 people to show up somewhere with masks.
100,000 people. With 100, they’ll just take as many as they can. With 100k, they just have to let the sea wash over them and hope they aren’t swept out with it.
